jonnybaker

music is sacred

this room is in the vinyl factory reverb exhibition at 180 studios. take your shoes off - a sure sign this is holy ground. sit in quiet in what feels like a sacred space and an album takes centre stage to be played for everyone to listen to. music is spiritual or can be. my own experience is that i find music has played an important part in the soundtrack of my life. It can speak to me, inspire me, help me express emotion, touch me, put into words what i don't know how to, be a prayer, accompany a prayer. i loved it - so simple, one to do at grace at some point. it got me wondering what a playlist would be of spiritual tunes. i may come back to that...

theology brewed in an african pot

it's the beginning of term. a new year is always both crazy busy but hugely energising. at cms in oxford we have around 100 pioneers doing some training with us at undergrad, post grad and doctoral levels. it's such a joy and privilege meeting them and encouraging them in who they are, their sense of vocation, their learning and practice. i teach a couple of modules at undergrad level. one is an introduction to practical theology and reflective practice. we had the first day of that yesterday where amongst other things we discussed theology as a quest, as faith seeking understanding, as conversation about god, as something for everyone and not justan elite educated crew, as something lived, as something contextual and local and intercultural, as something global and not just western and so on. one of the ideas we came back to was theological homelessness (scroll through this edition of anvil and you'll find an article by me and cathy ross on it). 

as you would expect, for every module there is a reading list. one of the books on that is theology brewed in an african pot by agbonkhianmeghe e orobator and an essay option is 'what does theology look like brewed in the pot of your community?' which i think is a fun title (i am not so sure students think it's fun writing essays mind!). i have always loved learning from other cultures and contexts and putting my western learned sense of things in conversation with that - it's a gift cms has given me. it's such a relief to find that wesrern theology (ies?) are a local theology rather than universal and will be enriched in conversation with other theologies. i'll never forget john mbiti sharing names of god he had collected from his travels in africa and he had over 300 names. orabator has various prayers and liturgies in the book, one of which is inspired by john mbiti. it's called an african invocation of divine names and i found it online here and am taking the liberty of posting it below (largely because i have learned over the years of blogging that links eventually don't work!). what does theology look like brewed in the pot of your community i wonder?

Ancient deity,
Unbreakable stone,
Consoler and comforter providing salvation,
Grandfather who alone is the great one,
Watcher of everything who is not surprised by anything,
Piler of rocks into towering mountains,
Divider of night and day,
Response: We praise You!

Sun too bright for our gaze,
Eye of the sun,
Artist-in-chief,
Drummer of life,
Owner of our head,
Large and deep pot,
My feathered one,
Mother of people,
Response: Bless us!

Great nursing mother,
Great eye,
Great rainbow,
Great personal guardian spirit,
Unsurpassed great spirit,
Great source of being,
Great mantle which covers us,
Great leopard with its own forest,
Great healer of eternal life,
Great water-giver,
Great well,
Greatest of friends,
Great spider, the all-wise one,
Response: Enlighten us!

Controller of destiny in the universe,
All-powerful, never defeated,
Father of laughter,
King without blemish,
Possessor of whiteness,
Whiteness without patterns,
Caller-forth of the branching trees,
Unique great one to whom one can take petitions and requests for counsel,
Response: Hear us!

The first who always existed and will never die,
The only one bull in the world,
The one who sees both the inside and the outside,
The one we meet everywhere,
The one who is in all ages, everywhere and at all times,
The one who turns things upside down,
The one who has power to destroy completely,
The one who makes the sun set,
The one who gave everything on this earth and can take everything away,
Response: Guide us!

Axe that fears no thistle,
Hoe that fears no soil,
Ram of majestic sinews and majestic carriage,
Hero who never flees before the enemy,
Big boundless hut,
Victor over death,
Response: Protect us!

Compiled from John Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion (London: Heinemann, 1975); Robert E. Hood, Must God Remain Greek? Afro Cultures and God-Talk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); Joseph Healey and Donald Sybertz, Towards an African Narrative Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), and other sources.

Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator - Theology Brewed in an African Pot

i am adding this as a worship trick - yes i'll be getting those going again sporadically.

nick cave and sean o hagan on the sacred

the sacred podcast interview with nick cave and sean o hagan is really remarkable. i have seen nick cave many times and love his music. i have been intrigued by or drawn to the spiritual quest that seems to infuse his song writing in places. seeing him and warren ellis at the royal albert hall last year was a spiritual experience which ended in prayer or a kind of blessing. he wrote an intro to marks gospel in the canongate series some years back. his letters to the community that rallies around or towards him are honest and searching pastoral letters of a sort. some have called it the church of nick cave! i have also been blown away by the films of the last few years especially one more time with feeling which is the most raw thing i think i have ever seen on grief, grief for the loss of his son arthur. 

the podcast explores the themes in the book faith hope and carnage (which i have not read but now will definitely do so) and the theme of the sacred. it is so interesting to hear nick suggest that it is easier to find the sacred in the world than in religion - the natural world, wild swimming, music and art, and so forth. i find the same to be true. but he also loves church spaces and the sense of mystery that is there. i found myself strongly resonating with the notion that christianity has diminished god with its certitude and stridentness which makes it so difficult for those reaching towards god. it's a beautiful conversation. there is a transcript on the podcast page but i do recommend listening.

trickster remakes the world exhibition in ealing in september

i am taking part in a photography exhibition in ealing as part of BEAT - the wonderful ealing art trail. it's called trickster remakes this world. the local photography group i am part of is putting it on. it is inspired by the book trickster makes this world by lewis hyde. those of you who have followed the blog may remember this being something i have talked about before at the inspiration of nic hughes and kester brewin back in the day. i presented on trickster's ruses at greenbelt a long time back, so it's fun to make that connection again, this time in relation to photography. the details are that it is at 

the rickyard, walpole park

sat sept 10th and sun 11th 12-6pm
mon sept 12th to fri 16th 1-6pm
sat sept 17th 12-6pm
sun sept 18th 12-5pm

as well as photography there will be a few other interventions in and around the park.

if you've not come across trickster, he or she is a character like coyote (see earlier post!) in myths and stories of various cultures. trickster is a difficult character in sone ways - breaking rules, living in inbetween spaces, messing with what's sacred and so forth. but trickster also tends to be revered because they are seen to be critical to cultures changing when they gets stuck. during lockdown so many people said we can't go back to the way things were and yet where is the imagination for a different way or a new world? so it felt timely to open up an engagement with trickster and trickster's ruses. hyde's book explores the way some art and artists plays the role of trickster. each photographer got randomly assigned a ruse of trickster and the photographs will be their responses. hyde\'s book is not actually organised in ruses - they are simply phrases or ideas that i lifted from the book - i hope hyde would warm to the aproach. the spinning wheeel of ruses is here if you fancy having a go yourself!

 

theories of culture

on june 9 i have been invited to host a conversation about culture in willesden (my locale) - theories of culture

but i didn't realise the event is online and apparently anyone can join. this is the blurb i sent:

The gospel always comes wearing cultural robes – so says the great missiologist David Bosch. Yet for most of us that is not easily visible because culture is ‘the way we do things round here’ – it’s our normal. So it can be a surprise when we cross a border or encounter others who don’t share the same values or way of doing things. That gets further complicated when our normal gets tied up with what we think of as the right way to do things or the right way to believe. We kind of know that other countries have different cultures and we think about cross-cultural communication or contextualisation then. But a big adventure the church has been on in the last 50 years is realising that questions of culture are right at the fore in our own neighbourhoods and parishes and not just in relation to other ethnicities and national identities. Youth ministry, pioneering, fresh expressions are all attempts to respond to the challenge of cultures in creative ways. Come and join in a conversation about culture in an undefended relaxed environment. It’s a very rich subject and one that holds a lot of clues for ministry and mission for us all regardless of context or parish.

register here

towards a pioneering diocese

in pioneer practice one of the themes i explore is change. for those who see new possibilities and make new paths to make what they see happen (i call them pioneers) they almost invariably find themselves navigating change in a wider system or organisation. this is as true of pioneers in the church as it is elsewhere. in research i did with pioneers which is in the book the top answer given as to what is most likely to derail pioneering was the powers that be. and yet in my experience very little training is given on systems and culture change and how to navigate those powers. we do some in leadership at cms but i think we could do more. there is actually quite a bit written in this area around organisations which are somewhat different and there are definitely insights to be gleaned though not everything translates - this piece in anvil is excellent by way of example. i have been reading quite a lot in this area recently as it seems to me that not just pioneers but a lot of leadership now at least in the church space requires this ability to navigate change, adaptability, resourcefulness, flexibility, imagination, awareness of systems and culture change and so on. and yet leaders are largely trained to lead worship, teach, do pastoral care and so forth. 

all that is to say i was delighted to read a blog post by tina hodgett on enabling culture change in a diocese in the church of england towards a pioneering culture. her blog has a series of 16 suggestions and the gold is further developed in the attached paper which you can download at the bottom of the article. whether dioceses have the appetite for this i am less sure but i hope some might! anyway it's definitely worth a read and trying to provoke a conversation about if you are involved in a diocese. tina worked in diocesan structures in bath and wells diocese so it comes from her own experience and learned wisdom.

an adventure of the (digital) imagination

i got a copy in the post of missio dei in a digital age edited by jonas kurlberg and peter phillips. i attended a conference back in april 2019 on the theme and presented a paper there which i called mission: an adventure of the (digital) imagination. all those have been worked up into this volume. at the time no one knew that reflecting on mission in relation to digital communication and connection and community would be such a big thing come 2020.

in my chapter i explore how the currency of mission is imagination in relation to culture. the wisdom gleaned from intercultural work is a great resource to reflect on in relation to digital spaces. in a section called imagination, seeing and inventiveness i look at examples from winson green and nomad podcast. my chapter is also a dialogue or riff on pete ward's liquid ecclesiology. love to know what you think if you read it!

it's the kind of book you can dive in where you like and where your interests lie - i found it a really interesting read and think my takeaway was katherine schmidt's down to earth suggestion that "most Christians should be in digital spaces as themselves witnessing to God's mercy through relationships".

that's me done for a while on books i have contributed to (apart from the one i am working on right now of course!)

flipped church

the flipped classroom is a simple idea. you use technology to make available content for individuals to access for their learning before you meet and/or afterwards – this might be video, reading, presentations and so forth. but when you gather as a group you use the time or the bulk of it for interaction and dialogue. i've taken this approach to teaching online. 

but i began wondering could you think the same about church and what would the flipped church look like? my thoughts are on the pioneer blog - click on the link. i have been pondering these things in preparation for the webinar on wednesday reimagining church

this got me trawling back through blog posts from 2005 and 2006 and i found this post and set of questions i posed wondering about the implications of the online environment for church. well here we are 14 years later asking the same questions...

can we imagine...
church beyond gathering?
church beyond once a week?
church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
church where community is the content?
theology and resources of church being open source?
church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
an ethos of low control and collaboration?
an economy of gift?
church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

 

nomad - happy ten years!

happy ten year anniversary to nomad podcast - it's wonderful and a massive achievement to have produced such an interesting and dynamic conversation, communication and community. 

it explores christian faith in today's world. their strapline is stumbling through the post-christendom wilderness, looking for signs of hope. it's honest, searching, and on a genuine quest. each episode carries an in depth conversation with someone for about an hour and is topped and tailed by the hosts chatting about it. typically the people interviewed have published a book though not always. i have by no means listened to all the episodes but every so often catch up with it and dive in. sometimes i might listen to a big hitter like walter brueggemann but another time i stumble across someone i have never heard of because the theme grabs my attention. one of the recent ones i listened to was edwina gateley on missionaries, mystics and mother god which you have to listen to if you haven't. i loved her and her story - she is a northwestern english saint for sure. she probably wouldn't use the term but she is an incredible  pioneer with some classic elements of a pioneer's journey in her story. i noticed she has a poetry collection called there was no path so i trod one! because they are not bound by the constraints of pleasing a political church environment or denomination there is a great freedom in exploring issues fearlessly and honestly - the interview with vicky beeching was one example of that. i have also had the honour of being interviewed a couple of times which i have enjoyed.

but rather than going through my favourite episodes to celbrate, i have been reflecting how people are interacting with it and how it is becoming quite a thing...

at one level it is just a podcast and because the content is consistently good it's growing followers. it helps that tom wright has been interviewed and drawn in listeners as is explained in their epic 10th anniversary edition of 3 hours and 37 minutes (i was driving to cumbria so found myself listening to the whole thing!).

at another level it is part of a changing environment in which people are working out how to follow christ and connect with others. there are huge numbers of people who follow christ but do not engage with traditional patterns of church attendance but they do meet with friends to discuss faith over coffee or the meal table, they listen to podcasts, they attend festivals and read books and chat online. the podcast interview with steve aisthorpe, the author of 'invisible church' really lifts the lid off this area of a new kind of practising of christian faith. the stats are huge on this in both the uk and america - there are a lot more followers of christ not in church on a sunday, not because they have given up but they are making faith in other ways and often because church as they have known it is not working for them any more. i have written elsewhere that this is one of the current mission movements that not many people are paying attention to. 

for some of those people nomad and things like it are so helpful - people in that space identify with it and feel they are not alone or mad. nomad have developed a listener map so that you can add your postcode and then be connected with other listeners and there have been meet ups and gatherings. there is also now a listener lounge and a book club online. 

it is also interesting to me that tim nash who is one of the key players and who puts energy into this full time (i think) was part of an experiment in the methodist church called venture fx who invested in around a dozen pioneers to go and experiment with new forms of church and mission over 5-10 years. this has allowed tim the space to invest in this which has been a great gift and i hope the methodists have taken note and are feeling good about it. in a year or two that money will run out so nomad have been developing a business model whereby people can donate and in exchange for that get access to the listener lounge and other content. i have no idea of the scale of that but it is an enterprise model along with some merch they are selling. 

on monday we are hosting a conversation/research day on mission and church at cms which i am looking forward to (it's sold out so if you're not booked in there are now no spaces - sorry). i am looking forward to the day very much and it will be great to catch up with pete ward who is a good friend but now lives a long way away so i don't get to see enough! it seems to me that this is a great example of what he has called liquid ecclesiology. he has developed a way of thinking about christian community that takes seriously the fluid nature of culture. church is always constructed in relation to culture and must remake itself in every age. pete draws on missiologist lamin sanneh to suggest that the church tends to absolutise its own way of doing things and resists the call to translate afresh. but if the church is to move forward it must engage in that translation and needs prophets to lead her there. 

anyway all that is to say that as best i can tell as i pay attention it seems to me that christ is present in what is spinning in and out of nomad. it is a kind of liquid ecclesiology as far as i can see, a translating afresh. on their tenth anniversary podcast a listener asks if it is church and they say it is just a podcast. i think that's a wise answer but it's not really true or at least there is a lot more going on! in parts of the church huge sums are being spent on big churches - we're talking millions of pounds on city centre buildings, staff, sound systems and so on. the rationale is that these churches will grow fast and reach new people and they will also then plant out other churches. i don't really want to get into a debate about that here. but i would imagine nomad is resourcing thousands of christians and seekers and it costs peanuts - well a salary. 

anyway happy tenth anniversary nomad! thank you for what you do and make. i agree with a quote on the web site - flippin love nomad!

you are culture [japan 2]

i think this is just an advert but i did like the phrase 'you are culture' which we saw in tokyo. culture is many things and there are thousands of definitions and ways of explaining it. it runs deep and our worldviews and beliefs and values and practices and myths or whatever else it is are not just something that exist in the realm of ideas. they are also deeply embedded in us - maybe they are us more than we know or like to admit. it's great visiting a culture completely different from your own where you are illiterate in terms of not just language but pretty much reading any of the signs. when you cross a culture and look back at your own it reminds you to hold more lightly the way we do things around here...

we are the women left behind - ijeoma oluo

so i was flipping through guardian articles on my phone while eating porridge this morning and clicked on an opinion piece about beyoncé's new album lemonade. i am not really a beyoncé fan - never owned a track actually. but i like to keep up with the zeitgeist and i absolutely loved her performance at the superbowl and the video of formation that went with that track - which was powerful, defiant and prophetic.

anyway this opinion piece is an amazing piece of writing - i could almost feel the empathy, tears and passion coming off the words. i haven't heard a single track off lemonade or seen a single video but having read this opinion piece i think i'm going to have to. here's a piece mid flow...

We are the women left behind. We are the women who have cared for other women’s children while ours were taken away. We are the women who work two jobs when companies won’t hire our men. We are the women caring for grandchildren as our sons are taken by the prison industrial complex. We are the women who march in the streets and are never marched for. We are the women expected to never air our grievances in public. We are the women expected to stay loyal to our men by staying silent through abuse and infidelity. We are the women who clean the blood of our men and boys from the streets. We are the women who gather their belongings from the police station. 

have a read of the whole piece. i may about to purchase my first beyoncé album. this piece reminded me of the track black woman by seun kuti which was one of my favourite tracks last year and i put on full blast driving up the m40 to oxford today. of course the former is from the perspective of a black woman and the latter a man but somehow they connected in my mind. 

around the edges

steve collins small ritual is amazing - go and have a nose round if you have never had a look. this is the latest sketch/thought/musing… dead centre

wake up [2] wealth: having it all and wanting more

the current situation of the wealthy elite in our country and indeed even more so in our world is disgusting and something has got to change. at times i have felt physically sick when i have read of the behaviour of the rich in the wake of the 2008 crash in their own sector and their attitude to the poor. i fear if it is not legislated to change by governments in countries like the uk and usa then it is like a pressure cooker that is going to explode at some point. 

today oxfam have published a report wealth: having it all and wanting more. this really is saying the same as their october report even it up: time to end extreme inequality, the statistics are mind boggling. the richest 1% own half of the global wealth. their share keeps increasing in the wake of continued governmental belief and practice in deregulation. supposedly deregulation leads to creativity and fredom for enterprise. but it's stark glaringly obvious that deregulation has created a culture of greed and self interest. 

we owe it to ourselves to get informed about this. i don't know if it's just me but it seems like there is a rising anger and awareness. even though it's extremely difficult to fuly grasp the workings of (the god of) the market i have recently been helped to understand it by a few things...

supercrash - a graphic novel by darryl cunningham. this is a book yes in pictures that i wholeheartedly recommend.

capital by piketty - last year an economist who did some counting that caught bthe world's attention as it highlighted how inequality was rising but hugely problematic. it's rather a large book sadly so here's a four paragraph summary!

the new economics foundation are an amazing think tank - follow their work. think tanks have been extremely important for the rise of neoliberal capitalism. so it's a relief to find one or two who are doing the thinking on economics out of a different imagination. this paper is very important because it makes the case that inequality does not lead to flourishing in the economy. it's obvious it doesn't lead to flourishing in life as a whole!!!

ann pettifor's work is genuinely brilliant, a prophet i would say - she now works for another think tank - policy research in macro economics (PRIME) - keep an eye on their work.

the book to get your blood boiling but also highlighting so many shocking things about our society in relation to power, money, politics and privilege is the establishment by owen jones - totally brilliant. i can't recommend it enough. i have two chapters to go and will review it then. 

i also try and read most things george monbiot writes as he seems to have a pretty good sense of things.

there are also growing numbers of documentaries of the superrich on their yachts and islands and castles and palaces and private estates living in their own bubble. honestly sometimes it's like watching a james bond villain - epstein and his island for example - just hideous. is it going to get to the stage where they build their own armies to defend their stuff from the rest of the world???!!! that seems to be the way it's heading.

what can be done? a lot actually! it's not hard to work out that you don't have to run society this way. we need to manage the financial sector to address it's immoral greed and that needs international as well as national involvement. it also requires separating the vested interests of the rich from government - it's all too cosy cosy. we need jobs for all and invest that way including reducing inequality. we need fair taxation that hugely shifts inequality and invests taxes in arts, education, welfare. simple! who in politics has the courage to do it? oxfam and others all have theior own take but essentially it's in this kind of direction. i don't hear a lot from the main parties. they seem afraid. who is going to rise up and have the courage to make a better society? 

wake up!

last night i watched charlie brooker's screen wipe 2014. it's a month by month roll through the year with him taking pops at virtually everybody in his perceptive and sarcastic fashion. i laughed out loud several times. part of me wishes he would rant less and shift the tone as i think he has things to say to a much wider audience but i like it none the less... but in the middle of it was an extraordinary five minutes by the wonderful adam curtis who is the most brilliant documentary maker, at least when it comes to taking a helicopter view of the narratives in the wider culture. turns out that that segment is on youtube so take five minutes of your life and watch it.

i've called the post wake up because it's one of a number of things that i have read or watched recently that have reminded me of how much things need to change and i need to wake up and (together with others) imagine and work towards a different kind of world and society than the one we have now...

the stuff of nightmares

i was genuinely angry when shell had the audacity to put out an ad making out they are some kind of environmental saviours - what a joke! there’s another energy ad at the moment doing the same thing with an overlay of an orangutan. do these companies think we are stupid???!!! so i was delighted to get an email as a member of greenpeace inviting me to contribute to buying an ad in response which was featured in thursday’s papers doing a bit more truth telling!

hacking, edgework and the meld!

if you read my tale of two books shops post, the second of my four books that i purchased at the ICA is i admit a little more obscure than rewilding and you may think what on earth inpsired you to buy that?! it is explore everything: place hacking the city by bradley garrett. in it he describes joining urban explorers who hack the city by which i mean that they find ways into adandoned buildings, sewers, skyscrapers, disused underground stations. the study itself is an ethnography - i.e. the author joins a group to particpate and observe their culture to research and document it. this is a brilliant way of getting inisde a culture and it doesn't take long before he is utterly compelled by it. a lot of this hacking is illegal so what grabbed me about the book? here's a few things...

i love the word/metaphor of hacking. i appreciate it has a lot of negative connotations especially since the phone scandal. but the original definition of a hack is a solution to a specific computing problem. this quickly got extended to life hacks - creative solutions to problems in everyday life usually exploring the limits of what is possible. but it is particularly the spirit in which it is done that is interesting - there is a sort of ethos or ethic of sharing, openness, and decentralisation. rather than a world where i do my thing to gain competitive advantage and keep it from you, hacking assumes that information should be shared in an open source fashion so that somone else can access it, take it apart to its component pieces and reassemble to make something new and better or repurposed which is then shared with the wider community to make the world a better place. this it seems to me is a fantastic metaphor for mission or theology or the church - making available liturgies and theology and canons to be creatively played with to come up with new and fresh takes on things rather than as boundaries to be defended and kept pure. but in the book hacking is really about viewing a very different city to the one on offer, finding a different map and route through, levering open cracks in its surface to slip through. it reminds me of the work by french philospoher michel de certeau in his masterpiece the practice of everyday life where he contrasts the strategies in place within a system with the tactics that 'readers' or 'poachers' use to make do, to create an alternative route which makes a different meaning to the one imposed in the strategies. 

secondly i love the spirit of adventure in the book. i think the author feels alive and discovers a sense of wonder in the world and the city - he says that the one thing urban explorers all share is "the desire to find adventure in everyday life. this is the central foundation of place hacking". now this may just be the rush of adrenaline but i think it's a bit more. a friend and pioneer student at cms, steve, suggests that the gospel can be understood as a call to adventure and he is exploring that - i think he'll like this book. garrett has this lovely word for moments when everything is right and comes together, of epiphany, of "when the seen and unseen, the possible and impossible, the self and community fuse" - the meld! what a great word - i know i have experienced the meld in silence when i have felt at one with the world, at home in my own skin, in god, at peace. the place hacker is trying to get back a sense of what they have lost - a sense of self, place and community. in this sense it is a sort of spirituality i think. it's also a challenge to the way things are, finding cracks in the world, in the staus quo to squeeze open and to disturb notions of property and ownership - which if any of you are familiar with theories of trickster who is a mythological character who remakes the world through mischief is one his or her ruses. in a world where the commons has been almost totally eroded we need people doing this in my view. one way urban explorers describe this is edgework which again is a rather lovely phrase - i recognise this in pioneers who find the edges, the margins the cracks and dwell there in forgotten spaces with forgotten people. 

thirdly i love the photography - wow! i don't think urban exploration began as that but the book is full of amazing photos taken in these spaces in the city. here's one from a crane on top of the shard before it was finished!

it's a wonderful ethnography, a brilliant exmple of getting inside another culture to learn its language and codes as a participant observer. for students of mission it might not be the most obvious story of crossing cultures but is worth a read for that as well. 

 

a tale of two book shops

a couple of months back i had a meeting in westminster and dropped in to church house bookshop as i often do if i'm nearby to see what was cooking in the world of theology and faith. i managed to come out without buying anything which is always an achievement in any bookshop to be honest...

i had a meeting in london that evening and as i sometimes do i went to the institute for contemporary arts which has a great space to sit in its cafe and wifi - the kind of place you can sit for a while and nobody seems to mind. in the entrance is the ica bookshop. i was much less successful in my attempt to not buy books. i came out with four! what struck me about his arts bookshop was the focus of the books. i was so struck by it that i started jotting down titles. i won't bore you with the details but they were on themes like the economy, the future, the planet, identity, culture, the environment, gender and sexuality, how to live in ways that might lead to flourishing (and of course art)... in other words they seemed to focus on how to live in a way that might change the world. this seemed osmething of a contrast with the previous bookshop whose titles were more focused on a church agenda. this is probably grossly unfair and it's not meant to be negative about that bookshop (after all my book was one of the ones on display!!!). rather it was a reminder that artists are exploring and asking questions that are so close to seeing different possibilities for living life. it was also a remider that if you want your imagination sparked you need to get outside of your own area (one of the whacks of roger von oech i believe). and perhaps it was a reminder that in terms of discussion about theology and mission the conversations going on in the wider culture are where we should be hanging out and conversing anyway. i have read two and a half of the books so far and will try and post a review or two (i am also reading a few theology and mission books which i always have on the go so the point of this post really isn't to be negative about those)...

surviving at 16

richard passmore offers a very moving reflection on memories of being 16 and that he wouldn't survive today with the latest government proposals on young people which demonstrate

a society that has lost its way, a society of selfishness, greed and power

stuck in your own yesterday?!

i have now blogged twice about the adam curtis v massive attack experience - and everything is going according to plan and manage the world or change the world. here's no 3!

adam curtis and robert del naja were interviewed last night on bbc 6music by mary anne hobbs. the full interview was aired on stuart maconie's freak zone. it will be up on iplayer for the week and begins at about 44mins in. parts of it were also aired on mary anne hobbs breakfast shows on sat and sun.

one of the questions mary anne hobbs asks adam curtis is are we really free? 

in response he suggests that the issue he is trying to explore in the film is how power works, how it pervades our lives - not just through westminster but through popular culture. one of the examples he gives is the feedback loops that are going on around us all the time thorugh computers - you like this so you'll like that. we've probably got so used to it now that we don't think about it. we're continually being given what we liked yesterday.

he suggests that the idea of the film/experience was to pull back like a helicopter to enable people to stop and see this static managed world (what he calls the pervasive ideology of our time). and he then muses whether we are really free?.. we're free to have what they think you like. is that freedom? it's a kind of static or limited freedom where you are stuck in your own yesterday!

i thought this was such a good line - stuck in your own yesterday. it's back to the previous post in some ways - with this approach to reality ideas and possibilities that are new will never emerge - they will be perceived as risky, unprovable, unmeasurable, and a threat. yet when we are stuck precisely what we need is this genuine kind of newness.

[update: thanks to laura for the link to this letter to massive attack and adam curtis]

manage the world or change the world?

i have not been able to stop thinking about the massive attack v adam curtis gig that i blogged about here. joel send me a link to a piece which is really interesting in FACT magazine where adam curtis says a bit more about some of his ideas. and he reiterates the theme that really caught my attention which is that we are stuck because

"we have opted to manage the world rather than change the world"

what an extraordinary insight! i think this is true in many businesses, lots of the social/charity sector and the church. we elevate managers and prefer and feel safer with them than visionaries and dreamers in top leadership positions. this may be because of fear of money, the future or simply we want to feel we can control things as best we can. and i also think it is also a really bad habit. shoot me down on this or tell me it's not true - but i am now seeing it everywhere where last week i was used to business as usual!

the article includes the words that were projected at the end of the film which i was trying to remember. they are:

"the future is full of POSSIBILITY"

"IT IS NOT PREDICTABLE"

"YOU CAN MAKE ANYTHING HAPPEN"

"YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD"

"PLEASE FIND YOUR OWN WAY HOME”

flippin' brilliant!